Dragon Age Dragon Age: The Veilguard Pre-Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Froila]

And what's interesting in this game is, if you don't romance characters, they may decide to find their own romances for themselves, whether within the team or within the world itself.

I have a cunning idea for future game designers: all party members develop relationships during the game, which culminate in a huge orgy after the final boss battle.

 

[SmoothPimp]

huge orgy after the final boss battle.

Orgy IS the final boss battle.

 

[Froila]

They actually did.

mutton chops ≠ beard

 

[Falksi]

Some of the shilling lol...

....love how Final Fantasy is now the go-to example for action games too

We just got old. General gaming community is now defined by people whose first big games were TW3, Bloodborne, FFXV, Bayonetta and PUBG, hence their benchmarks for comparison. Though Bayonetta is questionable because her great booty all over the game I guess considered male gaze sexual objectification.

I mean, we did, but that's still no excuse for being ignorant of history...especially when it's only like a decade or so older.

Shows just how much ADHD is rife today when you can look back a few decades before writing an article.

 

[Froila]

huge orgy after the final boss battle.

Orgy IS the final boss battle.

accepted

 

[Storyfag]

I mean, we did, but that's still no excuse for being ignorant of history...especially when it's only like a decade or so older.

Shows just how much ADHD is rife today when you can look back a few decades before writing an article.

ADHD has nothing to do with it. It is the overall degeneration of cognitive capability brought about by social networks.

 

[Tyrr]

And what's interesting in this game is, if you don't romance characters, they may decide to find their own romances for themselves, whether within the team or within the world itself.

I have a cunning idea for future game designers: all party members develop relationships during the game, which culminate in a huge orgy after the final boss battle.

That was already done.

Spoiler

In Rance 2

 

[Froila]

And what's interesting in this game is, if you don't romance characters, they may decide to find their own romances for themselves, whether within the team or within the world itself.

I have a cunning idea for future game designers: all party members develop relationships during the game, which culminate in a huge orgy after the final boss battle.

That was already done.

Spoiler

In Rance 2

Once again filthy gaijins are stealing Japanese heritage.

 

[Alienman]

Some of the shilling lol...

....love how Final Fantasy is now the go-to example for action games too

We just got old. General gaming community is now defined by people whose first big games were TW3, Bloodborne, FFXV, Bayonetta and PUBG, hence their benchmarks for comparison. Though Bayonetta is questionable because her great booty all over the game I guess considered male gaze sexual objectification.

I mean, we did, but that's still no excuse for being ignorant of history...especially when it's only like a decade or so older.

Shows just how much ADHD is rife today when you can look back a few decades before writing an article.

But zoomers don't play singleplayer games.

 

[Cael]

Come to think of it, with all those woke shit going on at the moment I'm surprised we have not seen a female dwarf companion with large beard in any of the games yet.

The only female dwarf party member I can think of recently was Sagani from PoE, but she had no beard and PoE's races weren't 100% equivalent to generic fantasy.

Sigrun from DA:O-Awakening was probably the last one. Prior to that, we have that crazy dwarf from Dark Queen of Krynn.

 

[Butter]

Some of the shilling lol...

....love how Final Fantasy is now the go-to example for action games too

We just got old. General gaming community is now defined by people whose first big games were TW3, Bloodborne, FFXV, Bayonetta and PUBG, hence their benchmarks for comparison. Though Bayonetta is questionable because her great booty all over the game I guess considered male gaze sexual objectification.

I mean, we did, but that's still no excuse for being ignorant of history...especially when it's only like a decade or so older.

Shows just how much ADHD is rife today when you can look back a few decades before writing an article.

But zoomers don't play singleplayer games.

They'll play this one if their favorite streamer soyfaces at it.

 

[Lacrymas]

But zoomers don't play singleplayer games.

Kind of. My boyfriend is a zoomer and he plays Genshin Impact, which is a pseudo singleplayer game as far as I can tell. Yes, it's a terrible burden on the relationship.

 

[Alienman]

They'll play this one if their favorite streamer soyfaces at it.

Isn't that the thing though with zoomers? They watch the streamer and give him money, but does not play, aka buy games themselves. That's the impression I'm getting. Unless it's something like Destiny for some reason.

 

[Froila]

Some of the shilling lol...

....love how Final Fantasy is now the go-to example for action games too

We just got old. General gaming community is now defined by people whose first big games were TW3, Bloodborne, FFXV, Bayonetta and PUBG, hence their benchmarks for comparison. Though Bayonetta is questionable because her great booty all over the game I guess considered male gaze sexual objectification.

Lack of erudition is a big problem in any craft, but unlike other crafts (drawing, animation, music, etc.) playing games is a very time-consuming activity.

In 40 hours you can watch and even discuss several movies, listen to several concerts, etc. How many games can one complete in this time?

 

[SmoothPimp]

That's the impression I'm getting. Unless it's something like Destiny for some reason.

Zoomers don't have $70+ to pay for AAA-game on release, so they watch other people playing, while themselves playing under $20 indies or greatly discounted AAA-games, that came out 3+ years ago.

 

[cvv]

This vegan turd is getting 10+ pages a day, meaning at least half of the locals who are relentlessly shitting on this game will buy it day 1.

Power of statistics.

 

[ropetight]

With a modern AAA budgets in hundreds millions, million copies is a certifiable, studio-closing flop.
Game with budget of 200 millions has to sell 4 million copies priced 70$ just to break even, if you are generous and assume stores will take only 10-15%.
And money came without interest - which it doesn't.
Realistically, in this case everything below 5 million copies is a flop.

It is the same thing with AAA games and Disney's overinflated blockbusters that need half a billion just to break even.
Most of these games and movies are destined to be flops.

Don't look like anything close to $200M. Production values more akin to Lords of the Fallen ($66M). Given higher US/Canadian salaries (I understand, that they outsourced most of tasks to companies and freelancers outside of "first world" countries, but still they have a great chunk of people, who work in USA/Canada, especially in management) I'd say $80-100M. It's EA in-house project, they have tons of games simultaneously in development, so they don't use to fund behemoths budgets. Previous installment was 10 years ago and didn't exactly made people to inpatiently wait for sequel, so I'm sure risk-limiting approach.

Steam takes 30% AFAIR, EA have their own store and as for physical sales it's up to wholesale prices of retailers, retail price could be 2-3 times higher than wholesale. And taking into account, that a big piece of expenses were already covered from another revenue streams, and loans were refinanced. No bank would expect, that his loan, taken for salaries in 2020, would be returned in late 2024 at best. And regional prices, though the difference tend to be less and less.

Long story short: there's a rough estimate of sales, that would be enough to bury exact numbers in complex financial affairs of EA and present it to shareholders like: "DAtV didn't match our optimistic expectations, but steady revenue stream allowed to support financial stability and solidified our market capitalization with further development of our most valued IP blah-blah-blah"

It could be that this is more AA title by budget and of course there is all kinds of accounting shenanigans EA could use.
And my numbers are rough estimate - i.e. I took half of Steam percent to take in account other stores.
But we are still talking about couple of millions of copies that they need to cover expenses.

Also, I don't think EA will miss oportunity to reduce taxes with expenses on the project.
One of the reasons they love outsourcing is that bills are tax deductible, and salaries are quite the opposite.
Rockstar was famous for never paying a penny of taxes in the UK after GTA V by paying bills to other Rockstar subsidiaries that were offshore.

After EA overinflates expenses of the project, they have good excuse to close BioWare - especially if sale numbers show them that DragonAge IP is not attractive anymore.
And closing a studio is not a strange occurence for them.

 

[SmoothPimp]

In 40 hours you can watch and even discuss several movies, listen to several concerts, etc. How many games can one complete in this time?

It's rather oversatiation of entertainment. Back in 80s and 90s people invested hundreds of hours in games, since there were less games, they were more expensive generally (no indies for $5 on almost endless parade of sales), there were no guides, almost no internets. Now it's consume as fast as you can. Even don't play yourself for 40 hours - just watch 2 or 3 hours of walkthrough on YouTube, read wikipedia trivia and you almost as good as those who had a very hard time to force through it learning on their mistakes.

 

[Bastardchops]

And what's interesting in this game is, if you don't romance characters, they may decide to find their own romances for themselves, whether within the team or within the world itself.

I have a cunning idea for future game designers: all party members develop relationships during the game, which culminate in a huge orgy after the final boss battle.

How about the first enemy you click on in the game just opens a live web cam to the developers having a 24/7 orgy.

 

[cvv]

Come November it's up to everyone to play this:

Or this:

 

[whydoibother]

Even 'rings of power' she-dwarves didn't have beards.

They actually did.

The Hobbit films had cool mockups for bearded dwarven women, but ended up not using them.

 

[Bastardchops]

Even 'rings of power' she-dwarves didn't have beards.

They actually did.

The Hobbit films had cool mockups for bearded dwarven women, but ended up not using them.
View attachment 50908

And instead opted to give the male dwarves gay hair braids.

 

[jf8350143]

If you don't romance characters in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, they'll find other partners for themselves

BG3 had one update where they claimed this and then immediately backtracked on it.

Not sure if it was a misunderstanding, a dropped feature, or if the fan backlash at the time made them reverse course.

Regardless, as predicted, it seems like the lesson that Bioware learned from Baldur's Gate 3 was that maximum degeneracy sells.

BG 3 never intended companions to establish any kind of relationship. That game has never intended for companions to interact with each other at all. The only exception is shadow heart and La'zel, they fight once in the first chapter and never speak of it again.

Bioware on the other hand always has the tradition of having companions interact with each other and sometimes hook up with each other. If anything Bioware is more superior in this regard because companions should have interaction.

 

[Lacrymas]

Companions interacting with each other is the best part of having companions. There aren't a lot of Kreia/PC relationships in video gaming, let me tell you.

 

[Reinhardt]

companions should heal you in battle and carry your loot